–

Mollie Monahan
So every time I’m critical about the people around me, I need to say like, and because me too, that we we get to this place in higher ed, whether we’re in student affairs, or we’re faculty where we get it, we’re good, we’re done. And I think that that mindset does a real disservice to students and our fellow faculty and staff, when we think we’re one of the good ones. And really, we’re out here causing a lot of harm. And so I’d love to see our field move more toward humility, more toward curiosity. Those pieces I do, I do see patterns where that’s missing.

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs now, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today I’m joined by Fernell Miller, Dr. Mollie Monahan and Dr. Jen Self, who are part of a racial healing project, which works with higher ed but also younger humans in PK through 12. As well, we’ll hear from them about the challenges, patterns and solutions. I’m really excited about the three of you joining us today and what I will learn from you today. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcasts and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays find find out more about this episode or browse our archives it’s studentaffairsnow.com. This episode is sponsored by Routledge, Taylor and Francis via their complete catalogue of education titles at routledge.com/education. This episode is also sponsored by Huron a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him, his I’m a speaker, author and coach helping hire ed leaders in organizations advanced leadership, learning and equity. You can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. And I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of both the Dakota and the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to the conversation. But before we do, before we even do introductions, you all have asked to begin with a ground in so let’s do that. I’ll turn it over to you Fernell.

Fernell Miller
Thank you, Keith. And yes, this is how we begin every space and session that we’re in. So I invite everyone who’s listening wherever you are to to stop what you’re doing. Sit down, stand up, put down whatever’s in your hand, find a focal point, I’m looking outside to my beautiful outdoors, I can be in nature in an instant. And so that calms and brings me back to my core self. So as we do this 30 second breathing. I’m asking you to pull in your passion, your positivity, your purpose as you breathe in through your nose. And as you exhale, let go of what doesn’t serve you What excuses your hesitation just let that go. Give yourself permission to pull into your heart space and get out of your head. We’re going to do the hard work of hard work today. And so we need to focus and do that. I’ll start us off with a big breath. And bring us back with an affirmation. Here we go.

Fernell Miller
yes, noises acceptable and welcome your eyes open or close, drop your shoulders, you know that you were safe and supported in this moment. Purpose.

Fernell Miller
And with your last three breaths, know that you are right where you’re supposed to be. There’s nowhere to get to. It’s all already right here. Your worth, your wholeness and your magic. Breathe that in. And as you bring yourself back, give her self permission to stretch, shake, stand, wiggle, however you need to to be comfortable and be present with us here today. And we’re also going to do a round of gratitude. So as we introduce ourselves, all model and start that. And Hello again, everybody. My name is Fernell Miller. I am the co founder of the root of us and a freshly minted retired educator of for 40 years in the K through 12 system. And my passion and purpose was to keep myself a hole and my magic. And so I did that by being a PE teacher on purpose because who has to take PE everybody and you get to see beautiful black me if you didn’t know that I’m a black woman on the screen if you see that. And I have known about love and education since I was seven. And which brings me to the purpose of racial healing is I’ve always wondered why my educators never knew anything going on outside the world of their door of their classroom. They didn’t know the brilliance and contributions and beauty of black and brown people. And I just thought, Gosh, why don’t they know and as I grew also, I found Oh, they don’t want us to know about all that. And so that brings me to my gratitude today. I have a beautiful grandson who just turned two and another granddaughter on the way and as I bring my elders with me my mother always I bring her with me wherever I go in spirit, because she never got to have any of these conversations, she’s actually wants to question me, well, who are you talking to today for what are you gonna say, who’s listening? Who’s going with you today, and she’s 92, I am not going to be a grandmommy 92 with my grandkids in fear of talking about the truth of our world and who we are and afraid to be my beautiful black self, I’m just not going to do it. And so after 40 years of sitting with our most young, vulnerable, beautiful human beings, that’s the way I show up authentically, always, every day all the time. And I want to give them the same permission and right to live and be, nobody should have to apologize for who they are, or ask permission to be who and what they want to be, and change their mind 5011 times if they want to. So I’m so grateful to be in this space, talking and sharing with you all and especially with my colleagues here about our racial healing project, and just the way that we show up in the world and the work we do together. And so although I’m retired, I’m just going to keep educating in a different way. So thank you, again, key for having me here today. And I’ll pass to you, Mollie.

Mollie Monahan
Thank you Fernell, thank you cute, and can’t wait to hear from Jen. I’m just so grateful to be here with Keith, my friend of many decades and Fernell and Jen who have come into my life within the last decade, and just the work that we get to do together. So the probably the most moving, joyful, painful, difficult, wonderful stuff I’ve ever had the opportunity to do in my life. And, and so I’m, I’m just so grateful to be here today. I’m also grateful for summer with my kids. And for the sun out here in Washington State, we don’t always get a ton of goodness, we’re super grateful for that.

Fernell Miller
And that’s why we live here in Washington for these five days, for the five days of summer.

Keith Edwards
Back to you, Jen.

Jen Self
Great, thanks. Thank you for having us, Keith, I’m really excited to be here. I spent a lot of years in student affairs, both at the University of Oregon and University of Washington. I was the founding director of the Pew Center at the University of Washington. So that’s the Gender and Sexuality Center there. And that’s really where I got to first, well, not maybe first but in a really distinct way, bring the way that I hold abolition and racial justice at the core of what I do to the work and to the work of students. And I just am forever grateful to the students who helped me create that center. And, and the legacy that they are creating out in the world. Now there’s so many of them out in the world that I’m just like, wow, look at, look at what they’re doing, look at what they’re doing.

Jen Self
And all of that started, you know, it started in them. But then it started also at the Q center where they were able to bring themselves and their ideas and all of their identities and all of their experiences and put them into action at the university. And I really believe that’s what the the core of Student Affairs is about is about like really tapping in to the student and what they have, what they’re holding, and what they don’t often get asked about and get to express and be and live. So that’s that’s what I’ve got, I’ve got I’m doing other things, but I can talk about him as we go. I’m gonna pass it back to you, Keith.

Mollie Monahan
Keith, I really realized that got so excited about telling my gratitude. I didn’t tell anybody about my background, that in my so that 20 years or so that I’ve known Keith is started in our doctoral program at the University of Maryland and so we were doctoral students together there. And I worked in higher ed prior to that as a Director of Student Activities worked after that as a director of women’s center and, and some other work but then pivoted to pre K 12 When I started having kids and realized that the challenges that we see in higher education around race and social identities and injustice, I started seeing firsthand where that comes from in pre K 12 and in parenting and all round and and so started doing that deep dive and then realized that once I started offering work Her parents in pre K 12 teachers, and started getting interest from deans and directors at university, my friends who I’ve been working with for all of these years, you know, they started saying to me, they started coming and learning from me about parenting and started saying, oh, there’s so much parallel to the work that we’re doing with college students, and why didn’t we get this information beforehand? We can talk a little bit more about that later. But I just love that through line of, you know, pre K through college masters doctorate. It’s all the educational system that needs to be really carefully looked at and dismantled in places and rebuilt in some places and all of that. All right now? Yes. Yes.

Keith Edwards
All right. Well, thank you for this ground in and the opportunity for me to share as well, I’ll share two things. I’m grateful to be here, I’ve been traveling and flying a lot in the middle of a mess, and delta sigh, I flew home this morning. So I’m really glad to be here and to be home. And I’m really glad, grateful to be with the three of you, and particularly this focus on healing and racial justice. I think that’s something that I just love connecting with and thinking about, it feels so needed, for so many reasons. And it’s something that we hear from guests, and we hear from our listeners a lot, you know, they really are connecting with us. So I’m really grateful. I think this will tap into what many, many folks are yearning for. So. Yeah, before we get to the healing in the solutions, though, let’s trouble what’s going on in the world a little bit, and then we’ll move toward that. I’d love to hear from, from the three of you a little bit about some of the challenges you see facing higher education related to the AI? And how higher ed is approach that? What are some of the patterns that you see, what are some of the missteps, and Dr. J, we’re gonna start with you. Right,

Jen Self
thank you. Yeah, I’ve been I’ve been in and around higher education since 1988. But you know, I’m much younger than that. So anyway, I’ve been I’ve been at a lot of different universities, as a student, and as a person who’s worked in student affairs. And the biggest problem I’ve seen that has been consistent over that time, is that we act like dei is some sort of thing that’s outside of basic, actually basic human care and, and, and education. That’s what really, the purpose of education should be, not what it was. But what it should be, is really about making space accessible for every student, every part of that students, their experiences with systemic and daily forms of oppression, as well as the way that their communities have responded to those and have been empowering, and all the strengths that people bring from, from those experiences as well. And we act like that is not core to what education is and it actually it without, without thinking about the whole human and the context of their life. Education will never be accessed.

Fernell Miller
Right, right, everyone, well said, and Jen, and just as I said, as a seven year old, I knew about CRT, it’s called critically thinking about how come this isn’t only working for students with white skin. Every seven year old black child can tell you what CRT is, we didn’t have any language or words for it. We just knew something’s not right. And so what removing those letters is going to what magically Stop it all or make it go away. Like we haven’t practiced our humanity, in school in education ever. And so now that oh, there’s some letters to actually recognize and talk about our humanity, what we’re going to stop because we’re uncomfortable with the letter tablet, we stop the comfort around or stop white comfort around that, because nobody’s asked me like, Are you uncomfortable learning about all only white curriculum and whitewash everything? Nobody’s asking me about that. But yet, we’re going to protect our children without saying well, which children need protection. So all of that in the letters and in that people get so wrapped up with is like, Okay, well, you you’ve got new, you’ve got new language and words to say what has never happened and what should always be the center of education, which is our humanity. So yeah.

Jen Self
Even the reason that we have these ideas of, well, diversity, right, diversity was a word we used, and then that dirty word. ISM was a word that was used in education, and that became a dirty word inclusive was a word we used and that has, and now DEI has had that same, that same morphing, that it’s become the kind of unknown word and, and yet this work has been inside the people who have been accessing education forever and for sure, since the 60s when a lot of these offices and cultural centers were built from students. Faculty power and uprising and movement. That’s where this came from is from the people. And so now what’s happening is that systemically, we’re trying to take dei and put it into a system that has already begun, it’s already an equitable. So you can’t take something like equity and just say, let’s plug it in here to this inequitable system, and then expect it to make the kind of difference that we want to make.

Fernell Miller
And the places and schools that are doing the work. It’s going to take longer than what it’s been four years since 2020. And we think, Oh, it didn’t work. Let’s check it all really stop. It took us how many years to get here. And now we’re gonna we’re gonna give it all up. You see the effects of it in every aspect of life. We’re watching it on the Olympics right now. So yes, we’re doing it. Nobody’s stopping anything. So sorry, Mollie.

Mollie Monahan
no, no, look for No, you know me, I’ll sit and listen to you all darn day. I don’t need to say a thing. I will add that one of the big missteps that I see happening in higher ed today is that those of us who work in higher education, education Think we’re good, we’re good. We’re the educators of these things. We know the things I see a real I’m, you know, I love I love Kathy Obear, saying, I know you because I am you. So every time I’m critical about the people around me, I need to say like, and because me too, that we we get to this place in higher ed, whether we’re in student affairs, or we’re faculty where we get it, we’re good, we’re done. And I think that that mindset does a real disservice to students and our fellow faculty and staff, when we think we’re one of the good ones. And really, we’re out here causing a lot of harm. And so I’d love to see our field move more toward humility, more toward curiosity. Those pieces I do, I do see patterns where that’s missing. So that’s a piece I’d like to add to that.

Keith Edwards
then don’t you think that some of that’s trying to prove or one of the good ones because we really know deep down inside? We’re not? We’re trying to prove to ourselves? Yeah, we’re one of the good ones, in spite of some of these thoughts that creep in? Are these things that I say are the things that I didn’t quite say? Right. And so I think there’s some there’s some distancing from others, but also distancing from self.

Jen Self
Who, yeah, for sure. Just holding that history and reality of that it’s not history that its current. That reality. And our bodies is really, it’s critical to this to this work that we can hold it. And I mean, the way I think about it is, you know, I hear I hear people all the time saying, Oh, I was I didn’t do that I wasn’t there, I wouldn’t, and I was like, Okay, fine, you are not responsible for the history, you are responsible to it, you gotta, like, pick it up, man, and walk with it otherwise,

Fernell Miller
and it’s gonna be messy. So stop the perfectionism over it and say the wrong thing, stop, because then that’s keeping you from doing absolutely nothing, which is the whole goal of the white supremacy culture is don’t do anything. Don’t say anything. Harsh, close your eyes. Don’t look, don’t feel. And we’re messy human beings. We’re going to be messy at it. But we can be messy at it and do it together. So let’s do that. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
I was gonna move as Mollie, but what

Speaker 1
did you know? Go? I think mine can come back to it. Yeah, I love

Keith Edwards
that we sort of shared some of the things we want to trouble about the system and about the history and about how we’re doing it. And you’ve created this racial healing project. So I’d love for you to tell us more about that. What that is how that came to be how you’re doing that. Go ahead Fernell.

Fernell Miller
well, Keith, US Senate people are hungry for not only hunger they are starving for it. And and like I said I was to where are we going to have a conversation with each other instead of about each other through and around through media and books and white? Like, when are we ever did we do that at work at the watercooler at recent like were nowhere and so I just started holding space I made a zoom link and said racial healing circle anybody want to come and I get folks from all around the globe. Tansania, Canada East Coast, Australia term tuned in and we all want to hear from and with each other. And so I just kept holding these spaces because of the this kind of the silver lining of the pandemic Because to get in the Zoom spaces, and I’ve never let them go on, like, oh my gosh, I and personally for me, I can go living here in Washington, I can go months without seeing black women, black women outside, I have to have an event or it has to be black history month for me to actually connect. And so I’m real intentional with my spaces and, and as a circle keeper, I’m just holding space where we all can have a conversation that transforms us and affects us personally. And then our sphere of influence. And then out in our global community. And so we just kind of kept doing that and morphing it into different things. And so we’ve got youth circles on Wednesdays, and educator spaces on Mondays and black sisterhood on Saturday, racial healing on Sunday. So all of these spaces where people are gathering, and holding conversations and transforming. And folks always asked me Well, Fernell, don’t people just come in all arguing and fight? Nope, not at all. Because the container reset is set with love, intentionality, humility, I follow Dr. Kimberly Creighton’s create a protocol in chat to know that we are going to get a turn to speak, it’s all trauma informed care, you’re not going to have to jump over somebody to get something said you there, you’re going to have space. And for me, that’s so important. Because I know when I show up in predominately white spaces, I have about 30 seconds before I’m cut off or interrupted or pushed back on. And so circle allows me to have a space where I can actually sit with my thoughts and think and speak without being rushed and hurried. And I know what somebody’s going to say. And so the spaces that we create, are doing just that. And we want to do more and more of that. And that’s what kind of is developing into a project, which we’ll tell you more about later. But just that’s the intent is intentional, purposeful, mindful, loving, spaces for our humanity to practice our humanity. Where are we practicing that? Anywhere? Anybody? Yeah, I didn’t think so. So, because I was looking, so we just, we just built it. Come on over, we’re over here.

Jen Self
Yeah. As you were talking for a while I was thinking, you know, I think a lot of people’s lives are this, I think fewer white people’s lives are this, which is I feel like my life has been a racial healing project, that that’s, that that’s what it is actually. Because to be to be a person in this country, we are just we are born into a system that is still resting on genocide and slavery, and that that is not gone, that is built into our economic system and continues to play out. And then we play it out in our personally. And I, I just know that when I was when I was a little kid, I was a little queer kid, little gender queer kid, feeling very outside the world, and outside of my family and outside of everything. And I looked around for, for other people who might be having a similar experience. And so I was asking questions as a little kid that I didn’t always get great answers to from my, my family, or those around me. But one of the things one of the keys and I’m gonna mention my teammates at UC Berkeley, I played basketball at Berkeley. And my teammates don’t read the books coming in, you will be thanked by me. But by my teammates, really, that was a place where I got to really have conversations about, about gender and sexuality and race and their experiences as black women in the world. And that that experience of being on a team that had that event that had those conversations, is that it, it told me this has to be at the center of what I’m doing every single day, or it’s not going to be something that I am able to enact. And so I asked myself, What can I do? Right, the second with what I know and what I have, and what I knew is I could be consistent, I could wake up every day and decide today, again, I am doing this this racial justice work inside myself. How am I How am I letting go of things that I learned that are just not that are flatly not true? How am I letting go of things that I learned that are just so quietly built into white supremacy and patriarchy that I’m having to figure out see them as I go along? And as I make those errors, and then how am I putting that into my, my work and as a 19 year old? That felt daunting. As as as my 54 year old self now, I’m like, Yeah, that’s just, it’s just become a part of who I am and how I function in the world how I think how I operate That’s your practice. That’s my practice. And it doesn’t mean that I that I, every single day I’m doing every single thing, right? Because I certainly am not. But it does mean that it is not. It is not part of my practice to be like, Oh, well, I didn’t mean that. Like, oh, denial, and I made a mistake. Oh, yeah. And part of that is accountability, and then reparation for what that mistake was. Yes.

Fernell Miller
I love that. That’s why you’re, that’s why your mind. That’s right in mind now.

Speaker 1
I think one of the biggest, most important parts of the racial healing project, for me is this sense of modeling what it really is to do this work in deep connection to our humanity and deep connection to each other across race and gender identity. And so the three of us solidarity, it’s that solidarity, but it’s also so we, there was this one time, we were speaking at a conference and Pharrell and I had a real moment up on stage forgot, like, a story. So, you know, Fernell was speaking and sharing wisdom. And we are getting close to the end of our, like, allotted time, right? And like, I in my white body, and my white supremacy culture that is so steeped so deep in, right, I’m like, Tiktok, we’ve got it. Right. And I wrap it up Fernell. I really did. I was like, We got to, you got to be done now, you know? And Fernell did and we moved on and whatever. But then I was like, Wait, stop. Did everyone notice what just happened there? That was white supremacy culture at work in my body that I put on, my friend Fernell that I put on all of us. And it I think one of the things about the racial healing project is that there is so much room for our humanity and our messiness. In fact, it’s so it’s like required, right? We have to notice and name immediately or have the capacity to circle back. Right. And it was after that. I can’t wait to hear what Fernell has to say about all this. But right. Like it was after that, and round the conference, that people kept coming up to us and saying, like, I have never seen them before, much less onstage in front of hundreds of people. Like nobody does that. And also, you just blew my mind, my mind about the depths of your relation, I am in relationship with black woman. But I don’t have that kind of relationship with black woman.

Fernell Miller
So anyway, I ended up the other cards that they saw as after you circled back and went, oop, my bad, you just see what I just did. And then to follow up to say, and did you see what I didn’t have to do? I didn’t have to come work for no longer on my lap and take her crocodile tears and turn it in about her like no, we moved on. Yeah, you messed up. Let’s do that. Let’s not do that again and go forward. And people just kept coming to like, wow, I didn’t know that you have a relationship like that. What was that and like that’s called humanity. We’re messy. We mess up, and we move on. We don’t have to have a big party and pity about it. And the whole point of healing, especially with trauma is not to gird ourselves to like, okay, so I can heal better next time. No, it’s to make room for all the joy love creativity capacity for each other our humanity so we can handle her right to guard up for the next time though. I’m gonna wait till that woman tries to interrupt me again. Oh, my God, I don’t I did not have time in my life and space to hold on to that stuff.

Keith Edwards
My friend Jane summers talks about white women shame spiral and how that centers them and their feelings things and we mess up. How do we stay out of that shame spiral and notice them the temptation. Right? And I think that story is just a great example of naming what’s happening naming what’s going on with a bad person and having to defend your own humanity.

Speaker 1
Which, I’m sorry, no, go ahead. It’s it’s that piece around. It’s not whether or not we mess up, right. It’s what we do when we mess up. Mm. That’s the piece that I think is really missing in a lot of our work around whiteness and unlearning our own racist patterns. We do get so stuck in that perfectionism. And we don’t want to go out there and do a thing before we know it perfectly. But what the real gem is here with a real piece that we want everyone to walk away with from the racial healing project, and any of the work that we do is, we know we’re gonna mess up. But the next step shows us whether we are connected to our humanity. Or where you know, in the shame spiral, or, or whatever, whatever, right, the next step, how we handle it, how we name it, how we let it how enough healing has happened in our body, that it can sit in our body without disrupting an entire auditorium.

Fernell Miller
Which is why your mind Mollie did not go round and round with folks about that. And to be clear, the unlearn whiteness is an all bodies Black, Brown. And that’s right. That’s right. And nobody said we’re attacking white people here. This is about our culture of white supremacy that we were raised and bathed in soaked in, dunked in. And so also with the anti blackness, I know you got it, because I was taught anti blackness and, and to hate myself and like, what, why would I do that? That’s all part of the systems that we’re speaking on and unlearning and healing from that if we don’t ever get to talk about it with each other, and we just talk about each other, then we just keep that arm going instead of healing. That’s right.

Jen Self
Yeah, I want I want to highlight the circle here that both both of you talked about, circle in particular ways for all talked about, like racial healing circles, Mollie talked about circling back. And one of the things that when I met Fernell, through Aaron Jones, by the way, thank you, Aaron. Aaron,

Jen Self
What I what I realized is, she’s mine already, because I’ve been doing circle I’ve been doing circle work circle leadership circle practice, for years and years and years. And, and of course, I was because everything that informed me was based on black feminism, and indigenous feminism, which is all like all goes back to being part of a community being in relationship to one another, being encircled with each other. And this circle, I think, gets gets misused by people a lot of times, because we want to stay in control of it, right, we want to like be in control of what’s happening and make sure the time happens, make sure people and part of what really being in circle is about is knowing that I have control over one thing. And that’s how I show up and, and letting go of control. And that doesn’t mean letting go of leadership. It just means letting go of that piece that we think is part of it, which is control.

Keith Edwards
What probably one of the most maybe the most transformative experience in my life as a white person was hearing Cornel West speak. When I was a junior in college. There was a partner the end of his talk, where he talked about the white supremacy inside him and his thoughts. And I remember sitting there as a 21 year old being like, well, if this thing is infected, Cornel West is

Keith Edwards
chance that I missed it. Right? Like, that’s correct to acknowledge my own internalized white supremacy not was shame not that it was a bad person. Not that I’m wrong, but just like, well, of course. And so I could be curious about it. I could share it, I could talk about it. And when it showed up, I can just be like, well, that’s why I mixed up those two names of two black men. Okay, that’s white supremacy. That’s what that is. I got to pay attention to that better. Right. And that permission slip has been? Really? Yeah. Well, I love your sharing about the racial history healing, and not only are you sharing about that you’re modeling it just in this conversation, which is really beautiful. I think one of the things I also want to tap into is that you’ve not just been working in higher ed. But you’ve also been working in in a K 12 environment. Fernell I’m just wildly curious about what you teach Jim. Like, I’m having trouble picturing that. But I’m, I would love to see it. But I’d love to hear what what similarities and differences that you’ve seen and learn from working across this lifespan and these different systems of education?

Fernell Miller
Absolutely. Not. Yeah. There’s no difference. How are our elementary students middle school, high school, college and beyond show up and the educators who show up with them? We were we’ve been all In, we’ve been duped all together. And so the kids who are much more ready to have conversation and be authentic and ask the questions, the adults are the ones who are like, wait, wait, we were told never talked about that? Well, we were supposed not to see color. And so there’s this, this real disconnect and clash, and which is one of the reasons why. And again, my 40 years has been in one entire school district, I was a student starting in fifth grade, and graduated and you know, oh my gosh, I’ve gotta go back, I’ve got to go back to this white supremacy system to mess it up. I’m shaking my hands in front of the screen to disrupt that because I know the lie that there. I’m not in any textbook. They never talk about me and stuff. Unless it’s a dehumanizing, derogatory way. I’m not represented, I see no. So I’m staying for a mirror for kids who look like me and a window for the kids who don’t. So they can see like a hello, real relationship with black people, brown people, all kinds of people and, and there really is no difference, which is why I started the high school, middle schools by paybright. But I went back to elementary on purpose to start this conversation and disruptive and I mean, it I am, I’m holding in any school that I’m at, because I teach PE, I’m holding the entire school in my palm of my hand. All 400 students at an elementary, every middle school kid has to come through me and my team to do PE I taught the Life Fitness route graduation requirement courses at the high school, so you couldn’t get through without seeing and if you flunk I taught summer school too. And I

Fernell Miller
have kids call me back to this day to say thank you for not giving up on me, I want you to be the first to know that I got into this college because you didn’t give up on me. And here’s how what I did with what you imparted in me about not centering my own self, and decentering. Just the racial isolation that we all grew up in. And so when I work with higher ed, we are still working with those kindergarteners, you still have those middle schoolers, you still have those high schoolers who are still trying to have those conversations and some got to some didn’t. And I remember getting a text in the middle of the night. From one of our high school students. She’s She said, this is all we’ve ever wanted, is to have this conversation and to be centered and be listened to. And these are from kids who came in our zoom class and I wasn’t their direct teacher they didn’t even know me they just knew of. There’s a spot where these adults were Jen, Dr. Jen, Dr. Mollie, Aaron, Vinson, everybody like these are adults who actually listen, they’re going to talk about this topic, they’re going to hold space where we just get to be ourselves and don’t have to ship shaped and appropriate and adapt and be followed and tracked. We get our own minds back. We get to speak with our heart. What and kids were flocking. We had a gold spate called circle every day of the week, because we didn’t have enough room for that’s all they ever wanted. So the so no, there’s no difference. It’s some have words for it, and some don’t. And that’s adults, and kinders. All alike. We don’t all have language. But we all are living through a similar experience that we don’t know how to navigate. We’ve never been coached taught, practiced any of that. And so that’s where we all come together to say, hey, let’s do this. Let’s heal over here. Come on, we’re going to try it. We’re going to hold space. So thank you for that.

Speaker 1
I was wanting to ask our colleagues in higher education. Who do we think we are? Teaching educating 18 year olds without having any idea about their development prior to landing on campus? What do we what do we think we are without having that part of our curriculum? And I mean, our curriculum, learning to work with college students, right? So we can look at pre K 12 Prep. And we know that it’s very rare in those college prep in those prep programs for teachers, teacher prep programs. They even get one quote unquote, diversity course. Right? Much less habit as a three line throughout their entire education, which is where it should be right, right. But then we get to higher ed, and we feel so enlightened, because we’re talking about it, right? But we never stopped to think like what’s the root of all of this? And so When I do my, my, my one workshop that keeps going strong people, you know, really want to see the how to talk about race with the kids you love and ages and stages guide, right? Like, I mean, what’s the first time we all saw that it was a while ago, but you know, it keeps being a popular workshop because it takes us back. It takes us age by stage through the racialization of children. And that as higher ed folks helps us understand how college students how and why college students are the way they are, as opposed to just sort of like, I don’t know, I know, for myself working in higher education, I was making a lot of assumptions about how and why they got there. And when I started really digging deep into the early childhood, racialization literature and like, being in schools in that way, it was like, oh, right, God, it

Jen Self
This makes me want to, like draw a parallel, like, between my some of my identities, and like, those of Furnell although I think for Nolan, I actually have a lot of overlapping experiences. But part of that is because of how you were raised for how long what you got from your father, and the strengths that you that you incorporated in the face of the racism that you were experiencing in Washington. But being a you know, here, I am white, queer genderqueer, like, I have experienced all sorts of things I’ve been treated as I’m not human, all sorts of things. And education was easy for me. So I just I want to say that that is a very clear education embraced me that it didn’t embrace my gender queerness it didn’t embrace my queerness. But it embraced my whiteness, and it embraced my class status. And so education felt to me, like it was made for me. And, and, and it was, you know, I just like, went through and got, I mean, I have so much education, it’s kind of ridiculous, because there is a place I felt safe was an educate was in higher education. And so the parallels here are like, what, uh, what I see in young people who have intersectional, multiple identities that are multiplicity, you know, focused on and oppressed in this country, it’s very different than the experience that I have those two, and I am white, that trumps almost everything that I know people don’t like that we’re but it does trump everything that’s going on in with a person because I am still on the outskirts of whiteness, I’m still right on that border. Now, if we really look at ourselves, those with the these identities like that, in whiteness, we are much closer to the folks who are outside that circle, we are much closer we have many more experiences that are that are akin to the people who are right next to us outside that circle of whiteness. And yet, what we have done for years and years and years is trying to become part of that circle that we are on the outskirts of. And for me, it was a very clear decision and choice that I’m going to go over that border, and I’m gonna live over here, I’m gonna live in this in this space. And And I’m saying that that’s a choice because it is a choice for white people that we that. And when we make it, we do have there are consequences to that. And those consequences, I have started to think of as successes, because things that some people might see as like, I didn’t get that, right. I didn’t get that job. Okay, well, I didn’t get that job because I was teaching from a critical race perspective. And I was teaching that we need to make classrooms open and accessible and how part of how we do that is by centering those who have not been centered in education. That’s why I didn’t get that job. Right. It’s not because I wasn’t qualified. So yeah. And that has become kind of a badge of, okay, I’m doing this right then

Fernell Miller
Is there just isn’t a way for me to get across that border. It and you have seen it, like doesn’t matter how much money and status and all of that my blackness is always going to be seen first. And so I might as well be good at it. So here I am. And for me, being in those schools, with so few black students, I need them to see that this is their identities of who and how they want to be and show up is always going to be the best choice first choice. Only choice and, and more than okay, yeah. And then look who’s leading us right now on college campuses. It’s always been the youth and so we can’t shy away or be afraid or try to shut them up or shut them down. They have always led us, they are closest to the truth. That’s our youth. Let them lead.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, Jen, your, your framing of the consequences of successes reminds me of a mentor of mine, Francie Kendall, who did a lot of work on whiteness, saying, you know, being an aspiring ally is not doing something and getting praise and credit. And it’s being willing to step in the train. So that person doesn’t have to get hit once, right? And you’re talking about like, yeah, there’s real consequences. When you do real work, there are consequences and seeing that as affirmation of doing. Yes, as this is how it works. There’s, there’s negative consequences for me. But that might mean I’m doing work in the world that is needed as well, we are running out of time. The podcast is called Student Affairs. NOW, we always like to end with asking our guests. What are you thinking, troubling or pondering now, and we’d also love to know, where folks can connect with you. And I realized I didn’t put an order for this question. So Mollie, let’s start with you.

Speaker 1
Oh, gosh, okay. Well, you can find us at the racialhealingproject.com, our friends at Ohio State, the Ohio State University, appreciate that study racialhealingproject.com. And we do want to let you know about a really is this kind of, okay, we do want to tell you about something we’re really excited about this year, and that is our college connection. So we are offering this really cool package to universities this year, where they get us for three whole days, all three of us. Bring it bring it on campus, for keynote for meetings with key constituents, and for racial healing circles, cross race, cross gender identity, and also an affinity space. And then ongoing work with, you know, after we leave campus, because they know one of the things that can be really frustrating when you work with that campus visit type model is that you go away and then like, what do we do now? You know, so it’s that ongoing thread that makes such a difference. And so, you know, an offering those courses that we have, like I I teach that course, for parents, well guess what? Faculty, staff, even students, or parents, right? And so what do we do when we learn how to do this work with kids? We take that into our whole life. 360, right. So all those things that we’ve come up with horses and all the things right, so. But we’re just so excited about this college connection, offering this year. And so we’ll definitely have that up for you on the website, soon as this goes live.

Fernell Miller
And here’s what I want to say about what whatever we do now ripples seven generations out. And I want to give a little quote by crazyhorse a little part of his quote, as I see it time and seven generations, when all of the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life. And the whole earth will become one circle again. Ah, that’s the racial healing project. And come on, let’s circle back.

Keith Edwards
So that’s where they can find you. Did you share what your troubling now what’s what are you pondering troubling now, Mollie?

Speaker 1
Oh, gosh, I guess I didn’t know what’s on your mind these days. All the things that we’ve just talked about today, I’m so concerned about the future in so many ways, although our recent turns of events have given me a little breath of hope. But there’s still so much work to do, right? And never want us to sit back on our laurels, so to speak, I want us to be in partnership with kids. I want us to uplift the voices of kids and students and youth and and, yeah, those are the things that I think are really heavy on my heart.

Keith Edwards
Right, right. Jen, how about you? What do you troubling thinking, pondering and where can folks connect with you?

Jen Self
Thank you, you can connect with me at brickthirteen.com. So that’s my site but I’m there are two things I have in my head. And one I think is more a conversation and the other is just it’s weighing on me. With the death of Sonia Massey, this this this past week I I’m sitting with and sitting with when I when I see those things, or when I know those I know those things are going on all the time. And I am troubling. How do we actually stop supporting the violence that is happening towards black people, how do we actually like everybody, like just stop like that’s like that’s, that seems like such a thing that we should be able to do just stop killing black people with just stop it. And so I’m troubling that. And, and then the other thing I’m troubling is this way that we that we’re having these separate conversations about gender and race as if they don’t, they’re not connected and they are intimately connected. That is, that is what our power structure is built on, is the combination of gender, and race, and wealth, those those three things. And so when we have conversations, like when you see a white person like me, who has a gender expression that I have, I want to make sure that people know I am always talking about the intersections of race and gender, just because I show up in a white body, that I am not talking about white people and our gender experiences. I’m talking about the most the people who are most vulnerable in our communities. And that is always going back to black and indigenous, trans and femme people. And so when we can really center those people, those experiences those voices. That’s, that’s what I’m always thinking about. How do I keep those things in mind as I go forward?

Keith Edwards
Thank you. Thank you. Fernell

Fernell Miller
a breath on that, Jen. Thank you. And in that same vein, what I’ve been asking in my circles this whole past year, is what your pedagogy, your practice relationship around blackness, we do a lot of work and interrogation around whiteness, white supremacy, culture, all the things but flip the coin, and what is your actual relationship with black people? Black Culture, black youth, black men, black women, families? Do you have a relationship? Do you want what what is it? That the group I’ve been sharing with this? Akash? Thank you for that question. I never get even time to think about that. I’m like, Yeah, let’s think about that. And that goes, like those questions come from Aaron Johnson. I found him on Facebook. I Aaron, if you ever see this, but just the where are you with it? And where do you want to be? Because black and brown people we don’t ever get to be without whiteness. We don’t ever get a world where I don’t have to interact. But white folks can go through their whole entire life, birth to death without ever interacting with blackness, black people black family black life, other than being a voyeur from a distance and waiting on you know, History Month or whatnot. So, to sit with that, and question, interrogate Where do you want to be? What would your life be like, if you have those real relationships? Because that’s how you stop killing black people is. That’s right. Have relationship and humanity and love.

Keith Edwards
And we’re not sure where people can connect with you?

Fernell Miller
Oh, well, I guess so you can find me. You can always find me at the rootofus.com. And my courses are going on all the time. And I will be happy to receive all in any one. In circle. Eventbrite is also where you can find the ratio lending circle to.

Keith Edwards
And so the racialhealingproject.com is where we can find sort of this group project. And then we’ve heard Mollie, where can they find your stuff?

Mollie Monahan
Oh, right. socialjusticekids.com. Yeah. Fantastic.

Keith Edwards
Thanks to the three of you so much. This has been fantastic.

Keith Edwards
Thanks for your your healing leadership in this space. Really appreciate it in the conversation. And thanks to our sponsors of today’s episode Routledge and thank you. Routledge, Taylor and Francis is the world’s leading academic publisher and education, publishing a wide range of books, journals and other resources for practitioners, faculty, administrators and researchers. They have welcomed stylus publishing to the publishing program and are thrilled to enrich their offerings in higher education, teaching Student Affairs, professional development, assessment and more. They are proud to sponsor the podcast Student Affairs NOW view their complete catalogue of education titles at routledge.com/education. And Huron is a global services. professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice by creating sound strategies, optimizing operations, accelerating digital transformation, and empowering businesses and their people to own their future by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo Huron create sustainable results for the organizations they serve. And as always, a huge shout out to our producer Natalie Ambrosey who does all behind behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. We love the support of our community for this important conversation. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube and our weekly newsletter. Will you’ll get an announcement about each new episode on Wednesdays if you’re so inclined, you can also Leave us a five star review I’m Keith Edwards thanks to our fabulous guests today and everyone who’s watching and listening make it a great week y’all.